


Briseis

by papyrocrat



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003), Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-12
Updated: 2011-12-12
Packaged: 2017-11-17 15:43:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/553199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/papyrocrat/pseuds/papyrocrat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>spoilers through the end of BSG; won’t make sense unless you’ve seen S7 of BtVS. So, uh, you know what this is. Mentions of canon character deaths, non-canon character deaths including suicide, metaphoric rape, SERIOUS ANGST. Also Six POV, which was probably unwise because I’m not sure I get her, but nobody else volunteered.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Briseis

**Author's Note:**

> spoilers through the end of BSG; won’t make sense unless you’ve seen S7 of BtVS. So, uh, you know what this is. Mentions of canon character deaths, non-canon character deaths including suicide, metaphoric rape, SERIOUS ANGST. Also Six POV, which was probably unwise because I’m not sure I get her, but nobody else volunteered.

They shouldn’t have been so enamored with the wildlife.

She remembers (or has maybe always known) an ancient warning, that _here there be dragons_.

There are dragons everywhere. It’s something she thinks she should have been allowed to know.

 

  
*

  
The days are brighter here than they ever were on Caprica; the nights thick and silent.

Gaius finds farming both more and less difficult than he expected, she thinks. He prattles on as much as ever about what is in this new world; he says little about what they do with it. Still, he loses the olive pallor that had settled over him during their years in space, becomes wiry and strong.

She thinks, overall, that they are happy.

 

*

The Leobens develop something of a rapport with the local priests, who warn them of monsters that fear no weapons.

Some of them even look human, until they devour you.

 

 

*

 

“Absolutely not,” Saul snaps. “I thought we learned our lesson about this crap.”

Leoben looks away, but stands his ground. “We need fighters to handle these things. Nobody can do it now – not us, not the natives, not the humans.”

“You’re not talking about a fighter. You’re talking about making a person into a weapon.”

“The monks know things we don’t,” Leoben insists, “we can help them do it right, at least.”

 _Over my dead body_ , Cottle had said once before they dropped the matter, and three months later Ellen stands between Cottle’s hip and his leg. “We’ve got to do something.” This time they listen.

Lee’s voice scratches its way out of his chest, dull and unused; he doesn’t even talk to himself anymore. “They might be glad for the chance to protect themselves. They have to live with these monsters same as we do.”

“Some of them already can,” Ellen points out.

“And what happens when we make them stronger? Think they’ll just protect us out of the goodness of their hearts?”

Three more Leobens tear themselves out of the stream and whisper furiously for a moment before one of them steps forward. “We can make sure there’s only one.”

 

 

*

 

 

Naia has died of dysentery, and his little boy come to live with them. This child is not like Hera, not anything special, but he is precious enough to fill every moment she lies awake that night and _listens_.

The next morning, she goes to Saul to say she’ll help.

 

 

 

*

“You two can stay out here. They say women are not needed,” Leoben tells them. They roll their eyes, but humor the old men.

She throws an eyebrow at Athena, who shrugs. “They say they need to target their energy one of the girls. They do things differently here. The priests say it’s not uncommon, when one of the girls goes missing.”

She crushes thoughts of her own missing sisters.

She still flinches when the girl screams. Athena clenches her jaw and stares straight ahead.

 

 

*

It’s the other ones that haunt her, the girls who are that small bit stronger and braver than the others. They band together and fight sometimes anyway. She marvels at this human impulse to make one from many, at the way they bend themselves into line and then fall like dominoes, one by one. So alive, and barely even awake.

 

 

*

She stands outside to watch the sun set. One yellow star, the last loving gift of a lonely god. Her attachment to it is selfish and sentimental, maybe, but it is truly beautiful.

Saul wheezes past. She waves him over. “Come in, before it gets dark.”

“No, no. Gotta get home to Ellen.”

They both choke on her pity.

“Right. Yeah, I’ll come in.”

They’re sitting around a meager but colorful dinner when the thumps and growls roll through the house like thunder. She sees three through the window, and hears more.

Ever the soldier, Saul sits bolt upright and reaches for a knife.

“That’s not going to help!”

“Helps _me_ feel better.”

Gaius pulls the boy into the sturdiest corner of the house and does what he can to barricade them back. She picks up the giant loose bar they have propped up by the door and holds on with both hands.

She’s never fought anything stronger than herself, she realizes during the infinitely long moment one of them rips off the door and bears its terrifying teeth.

Saul, unbelievably, starts to laugh. “Holy crap! It can’t get in!”

He’s right. The thing throws itself at their threshold and bounces back off thin air. They both watch as it grows frustrated, or bored, and eventually prowls off into the darkness.

“So what the hell else can’t it do?”

She leans to the right, until he can’t ignore her gaze. “You need to stay here until we figure that out.”

“Okay.” He crumples back into his chair. “Okay.”

 

 

 

*

 

Lee leaves again two days after they find the fifth girl. He comes home for the last time the evening she and Gaius find him on the shore under the cliff.

“Human sacrifice,” Gaius says after a moment of terrible stillness, holding his voice tense but steady.

She forces herself to answer. “All of this has happened before, Gaius.”

“That seems incontrovertible. But I had hoped not to live to see it happen again.”

Then he cries, and so does she.

 

 

 

*

 

One day she looks at Gaius and realizes she hadn’t noticed his hair starting to gray.

She had always assumed that human affection would make them study its objects more, that they saw their gods in every foolish detail. She understands now the way they project, deify each other to make their own world more beautiful.

That night, she leads him to bed; she tips back her head and closes her eyes as he fills her like breath. _You_ , he whispers as he comes, then he slumps to her ear and tells her _you are my everything, everything I needed, everything I never expected to want_.

 _I know_ , she says, _I love you too_.

He knows none of this, of course. Not even about the gray: there are no more mirrors.

 

 

*

His face and her spirit grow old together. Some nights she wonders if she, too, will be tethered to this earth, eternal and afraid.

She finds him one night, curled over one of their last precious sheets of paper. He doesn’t turn around when he hears her walk in.

“It seems only fair that we should leave some instructions.”

“You really think there’s a guidebook for this kind of thing?”

“I suppose not.” He pushes his project away and stares at the wall. “But we should at least give her a name, don’t you think?”

She’s hardly one to argue with that proposition.

“Do you think it will work?”

He draws a long breath. “I think it will last.”

She wraps her arms around him and leans her chin on his head. “Is that good?”

He puts his hands over her own. “It is what we do.”


End file.
